


Wasteland Myth

by Winterling42



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Mythology, Alternative Universe - Soft Wasteland, Australian Aboriginal Mythology, Gen, Horses, No Max, The Dreaming
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-05
Updated: 2016-12-04
Packaged: 2018-09-06 15:15:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8757718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Winterling42/pseuds/Winterling42
Summary: Prompted by a tumblr post (one I can no longer find) about what it would be like if the vehicles of the Wasteland were replaced by horses. Obviously this involves a 'softer' Wasteland where large animals could feasibly survive.





	

Before the days of the Horse Queens, who rode with white trains to deliver justice and mercy in the Wasteland, before the days of the Boltcutter and the Free Riders, there was a race. Or really, there was a race Day, when every scav with a hack would come to the Gastown tracks to win water, food, and freedom. And in those days, there was one race that could win you a prize unequaled throughout the whole of the Wasteland: a favor from a living god. For the Citadel, which bred the finest, bloodiest horses in the empty Wastes, would gift the winner of the final race with anything the Immortan Joe could provide, even an entrance to Valhalla itself.

Now, in the days before the Queens, there was among Joe’s favored men a road warrior of unparalleled strength, who twice rode down the Kelly Mustang herd with ferocity and speed in their blood. Her name, of course, was Furiosa. She was half-horse herself, stolen from her home where women rode like they were made of wind. And in the days she rode for Joe, fearless, killing where he told, taking what he wanted, she had no horse of her own. Only the horses of the Citadel, wild mustang blood crossed with brutal Shires who loved the crunch of bones under their hooves.

But one night, no colder than the rest, the woman Furiosa walked down from the cancerous stones and among the cancerous Wretched. This of itself was not unusual. Joe sent his favored down to do his dirty work, and sometimes that work involved the Wretched. Who was to know the motives that drove her booted feet down onto the sands were not Joe’s, but her own? And how would the Wretched, bound to their own two legs, have known the difference?

Joe’s favored Imperator walked up to a Tattooed woman with one eye and a crow on her shoulder, and Furiosa threw down a bag of mare’s milk, metal arm gleaming in the starlight. One-Eye snatched up her prize, drinking greedily before she turned that cunning eye on the road warrior. “Come to kill me?” the old one asked, milk dripping down her chin.

Furiosa crouched, her feet spread wide, her hand on a pistol. “No,” she said, her hair shorn short as a horse’s coat and a blaze of hoof-blacking down her face to mark her as Joe’s. “I’m here to ask for a horse that will win me the Gastown races.”

One-Eye cackled and her crow carked, an echoing sound in the blind eyes the Wretched camp turned on the conversation. “If I had a horse like that, Imperator, I’d win the races myself. I’d buy a shiny room in the Gastown Tower and eat horsemeat every night for supper.” She laughed again, a broken, toothless sound. She drank again, wiping her mouth with the back of one filthy hand. “Why ask an old woman like me?” she asked, the inked words on her cheek winking at her sly smile.

“Because you know the way to the Witch of the Wastes,” Furiosa said, still quiet, unshakeable. It was the voice she used to calm a restless stallion, a rearing mare. Those were the words she whispered to the snappish racers, the lean-boned, half-starved mongrels of the Citadel. Her horses.

The crow cawed again, but One-Eye did not. Instead she smiled a wide smile that showed her dark, dried tongue behind her remaining teeth. “The Waste Witch is nothing but a myth. As well expect the Road Warrior to come in, guns blazing.”

Furiosa unslung a second bag from her shoulder, set it on the sand. “I’ve got a liter of aqua-cola that says different,” she said, horse-tamer’s voice mild, boots without spurs. “I know you know how to get to her herds.”

“Even if this Witch did exist – and she doesn’t – it’s said she guards her herds more closely than Joe guards his Wives. How do you expect to steal one?”

Furiosa smiled. “That’s for me to know. Tell me the way.”

One-Eye stared longingly at the flask of water, mare’s milk still on her lips. A liter of clean water could buy her more than the bare survival of the Wretched, for a little while. And Furiosa generally preferred bribery to violence; it got better long-term results.

“There is no _way_ to the Witch of the Wastes,” the old Tattooed finally spat, her shoulders hunched around her ears like broken wings. “Give me that aqua-cola, and I’ll tell you the dreaming track. That’s all I have.”

“Tell me the song, and maybe I’ll give it to you,” Furiosa countered, and the old woman whined.

“Pin your hopes on a horse from the Dreaming and then bargain like this with an old woman? Cruel, cruel. You can spare the water, Imperator.”

“Nothing in the Citadel is spared. You know that, I know that. Will you tell me the songline or not?”

“You’ll never make it. The songlines are corrupted, the Dreamers have been worn away.”

“This is the Wasteland. I know what it is.”

“Fine,” One-Eye hissed, her bony hands clawing for the water flask. “I’ll sing you the dreaming track, and you’ll go out into the Wastes and die before the Gastown Races.” The crow on her shoulder cawed in agreement, beady eye turned on Furiosa like he was already planning his meal. The Imperator only blinked, waiting, and after a moment the Tattooed blew out a coughing sigh, and started to sing.

Long ago, before the Oil Wars and the Water Wars. Before the old world rose and fell. Before the Wasteland was a land at all, there was the Dreaming. The Dreaming was both before and after time; it _was_ time, endless, whole. And in the Dreaming there were spirits, ancestors and heroes, animal and human, who walked and flew and swam and crawled across the Earth, and as they moved they sang. They sang the world into being, and made rivers and oceans and mountains with their footsteps and their winding tracks. These journeys were passed to mortals in the form of songlines, dreaming tracks. Pathways that could stretch for hundreds of miles, through pitiless landscapes, and as long as you knew the song you would never be lost.

By the time of the Wars the dreaming tracks were mostly forgotten. And the Wars destroyed many of the landmarks of the songlines. In the age of myth that returned to the world with the fall of civilization, however, new tracks were made. New songs sung. It was only that there were so few left to sing them. Every songline was precious as gold to those that knew them. And now Furiosa numbered among them.

When the songline was done, and the path traced to the valley where the Witch of the Wastes ran her tireless herds, One-Eye fell forward in her haste to grab the water flask. Furiosa let her take it, still memorizing the songline, her eyes far away. After one greedy gulp to make sure she’d been given what was promised, the old woman hid the flask away behind her back and sniffed curiously at Furiosa.

“So it’s your life you’ll ask for, is it? Freedom you want?” the Tattooed asked, voice rasping from her long song. Information was trade, like everything in the Wasteland. No harm in looking for more of it.

Distracted, Furiosa only looked away, her chin tucked close to her chest. “Yes, of course,” she said, but she was lying. One-Eye cocked her head, crow-like, and stabbed her words into the soft skin of the lie. “Not _your_ freedom,” she said, sharp as a whip. “Someone else’s. A human weakness for the Imperator’s knife-hard heart?”

For the first time since she’d crouched down in the darkness, Furiosa lost the easy calm that reassured both horses and humans. Her shoulders went tight, her metal hand twitched with a click of gears and wires, and her eyes shone with promised violence. “That’s for me to know,” she said, deadly serious. The black of her blaze shadowed her eyes like a raptor’s mask, and One-Eye swallowed down her water.

“I’ll look for you at the Races,” the old Wretched woman said. She seemed unconcerned by the threat the Imperator posed to her, now that their deal was done. “Or Waruu here will find your bones.”

The crow ruffled his neck feathers, preening at the sound of his name. Furiosa stood with liquid grace, despite the fact that she’d been crouched in one position for over an hour, memorizing the dreaming track. She left without another word, as silent as she’d come, and the Wretched slunk out of her way like dogs wary of a kick.

**Author's Note:**

> I will confess to getting my information from Wikipedia. Anyone who knows more about Australian Aboriginal beliefs PLEASE let me know if there's anything I can improve! 
> 
>  
> 
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreamtime>
> 
> Once again, this is unlikely to update in a timely manner. Be warned. (also in case you guys haven't heard, comments/reviews/kudos absolutely turns into more writing.)


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